World War II, for instance, not only ushered in Japan’s roaring postwar economy but also redefined and homogenized its cuisine (by privileging urban staples like rice and soy sauce, alongside prestigious marine specialties). Japanophilia that crested in the 1980s amid broader culinary awakenings. The reasons for this mutual transformation have been scrutinized by an entire academic and popular canon: refrigeration, globalization, industrialization, long-haul air travel, a wave of U.S. To really catch on in America, it had to really catch on throughout Japan. Still, as recently as the 1940s, Rath writes, a survey of rural Japan found places where no one had heard of sushi. Japanese papermaking technology, meanwhile, was adapted to manufacture sheets of seaweed, a prerequisite for present-day sushi rolls. The rectangles on today’s plates and emoji keyboards, in contrast, known as nigiri sushi, resulted from a steady reduction in the level of preservation and were popularized as a street food in modernizing Edo (and then Tokyo, as the city was renamed in 1868). After all, they set out to build God’s kingdom - and somehow ended up selling America’s raw fish. Their greatest achievement would always be linked to their greatest limitations. At times comically, at times tragically, Moon’s followers have expanded our understandings of what faith can and cannot do. It would make possible “the sushi thing,” as Yashiro once called it, even as it laid the foundation for a bitter Moon-family feud - and a lawsuit whose consequences for tuna and salmon are still unfolding. For True World Foods, this deep entanglement of business and religion would confer both hidden advantages and a singular vulnerability. It can also live in the marrow of a world-altering corporation, bringing Japanese delicacies to Nebraska or influencing the sushi you ate yesterday, which may itself be edible proof that people and values at the edges of our culture have moved closer to the center, but not in the way we expect. It can start wars or artistic movements, define our most public acts or most private thoughts. “When he initiated that project,” she went on, “nobody knew what sushi was or what eating raw fish was about.” Moon, she concluded, “got the world to love sushi.” Or as she put it on a different occasion, “My father’s work is already in their body.”įaith, we all know, is complicated. “In an incredible way, we did,” she said: Her father created True World Foods. One of Moon’s daughters, In Jin Moon, once asked in a sermon whether their movement really made a difference. “We’re actually doing our strongest sales in history.”

The pandemic, of course, wasn’t typical, but “sushi was a big winner in Covid, because sushi is a great takeout food if done right,” Bleu told me recently. In many cities, Bleu says, True World sells to between 70 and 80 percent of midrange and high-end sushi restaurants the group’s annual revenues typically exceed $500 million.

Its Japanese subsidiary is on track to export more than a million kilograms of fresh fish to the United States in 2021. Go forward, pioneer the way and bring back prosperity.”Īccording to Robert Bleu, the president of its parent conglomerate, the True World Group, in its current fiscal year True World Foods has sold to more than 8,300 clients in the United States and Canada, overwhelmingly sushi restaurants. “You,” Moon later recalled telling them, “are the pioneers of the fishing business - the seafood business. Now Yashiro and the others listened intently. I will be responsible for accomplishing my duty and mission. Their oath ended with the following words: The true world, they sometimes called it. They promised to attend their Father forever and restore God’s ideal world. The date, according to a document a follower saved, was April 16, the day after a church holiday when they would have recited the liturgy known as Pledge, vowing to use their sweat, tears and blood as weapons to defeat Satan. and even God himself would all proclaim his greatness. It was said Moon could see the future, visit you in dreams and speak with the spirit world, where Jesus and Buddha, Moses and Washington, caliphs and emperors and the Rev.

Yasu name meaning